Sunny weather brightens Bruin attitudes

Sunny weather brightens Bruin attitudes

Feb. 3 temp of 91 degrees beats ’54 UCLA record

By Tatiana Botton

Students smiling, people playing Frisbee and bodies sunning on
the grass — this is how UCLA looks when the weather is warm.

"If it is a sunny day, it puts you in a good mood," said Lisa
Gild, a third-year communications student eating her lunch on the
grass in Meyerhoff Park.

The hottest day was Feb. 3, last Friday, when UCLA’s thermometer
indicated 91 degrees, beating the old UCLA record of 90 degrees set
in February 1954.

As a result of these blistering numbers, students are rushing to
buy ice cream and frozen yogurt, and the lines at Kerckhoff Coffee
House and other places on campus continue expanding.

"It’s the right time to have an ice cream because it’s warm so
it helps (you) cool out," said Stephanie Yee, an undeclared
sophomore waiting in the Kerckhoff ice cream line.

But this hot weather is not going to last forever, forecasters
say. Although it will still be sunny for a few more days, UCLA will
begin cooling off after that, explained James Murakami, UCLA’s
weather forecaster.

These changes won’t bother some students, who even with sunny
weather at 91 degrees, still like to be indoors.

"It doesn’t matter if it’s sunny outside, because here
(Kerckhoff Coffee House), is my usual hang out," said Anisha Amery,
a third- year physiology major.

Last week when UCLA experienced some of the heaviest rain in
years, many students said they felt depressed by the weather.

"The weather affects students in their feelings and their
behavior," said Albert Mehrabian, a UCLA professor of
psychology.

"Good weather gives students a lot of choices, but when it rains
these choices are limited in terms of behavior, and students feel
more stressed," Mehrabian added.

For others it has been hard to concentrate on studying for
midterm exams while they hide from the sun and do their last minute
reviews.

"I’m inside because outside is too bright and I can’t
concentrate. When it’s sunny I don’t feel like studying. I would
like to go out and play around," said Winnie Nieh, a second-year
biochemistry student.

But even if people are psychologically influenced by the
weather, UCLA’s Student Psychological Services have received as
many calls this week as they received when it rained, said Director
Hal Pruett.

Weather predictions aren’t accurate for longer than a period of
10 days, and six days with high accuracy. Because we are in winter,
there are going to be bouts of storms along with periods of good
weather, UCLA meteorologists said.

But climate prediction is highly difficult because it’s only
based on statistics, said Carlos Mechoso, UCLA professor of
atmospheric sciences.

This year is going to be wetter than normal. The National
Weather Service attributes the cause to El Niño conditions
during the rainy season, Mechoso said.

"Climatologists look for something that lasts an entire season.
When you look for something in nature that stays there for a month
or longer, you look into the oceans because the oceans move (and
change) much more slowly than the atmosphere," Mechoso added.

The term El Niño ( Spanish for "the Christ Child") was
originally used by fishermen along the coasts of Ecuador and Peru
to refer to a warm ocean current that typically appears around
Christmas time and lasts for several months.

"It’s a cycle. Sporadically the Pacific Ocean around the Equator
becomes warmer and sporadically it becomes colder. Each time it’s
warmer than normal it’s called El Niño, and each time it
becomes colder is called La Niña," Mechoso said.

In the late 1960s, UCLA professor Jacob Bjerknes was the first
to discover the relationship between the unusually warm surface of
the water during El Niño and changes in the weather over the
Pacific and elsewhere.

In some parts of the world the impact of El Niño is very
clear.

"In South Brazil for example if there is an El Niño, there
is high probability of rain. But unfortunately in California we
cannot say statistically that because there is an El Niño,
automatically it is going to rain," Mechoso said.

Usually El Niño takes one year to develop, another year to
stay, and then one more year to slowly decay.

"But we had El Niño last year, and we have it this year
again. Some researchers say that (this occurrence) is an indication
of the chaos of the atmosphere," Mechoso said.